One Shining Moment Page 3

  Tolliver was overwhelmed by the beauty of the woman who smiled at him. He’d seen pictures of Lylah, of course, but no photograph could have the power that she had in person. And she had touched on the one thing that was close to his heart—his business.

  “Why, it’s not a big business, Miss Lylah, not yet that is—but I’ve got plans. I don’t see why Tolliver Hardware stores couldn’t be strung out all over the state—or even further!”

  Lylah listened carefully. This man was important to her, for she knew that Christie was not wise where men were concerned. Her sister was the sweetest woman in the world, but vulnerable. Lylah herself was a shrewd judge of men, and by the time she’d listened to Tolliver for ten minutes, she had formed a judgment. He’d bore me to death with all his talk about nails and bolts—but Christie may not be so hard to please.

  Finally Christie came to say, “Dinner’s ready,” and Lylah rose and went with Tolliver to the dining room.

  The table was loaded down with food, and Lylah exclaimed, “Why, I’d be as fat as that hog you’re so proud of if I ate this, Pa!”

  “Don’t care how fat I get,” Lenora grinned. “Brother Satterfield, I hope you’ve got a short blessing in you.”

  Don Satterfield did indeed have a brief blessing, and after it was finished, the food disappeared at an alarming rate. Don noted that Agnes Stuart said almost nothing, and he wondered at it. When he complimented her on the food, she looked nervously toward her husband, saying only, “Thank you, Brother Satterfield.”

  The woman’s reticence puzzled the minister, and he whispered to Lenora, who sat close to him, “What’s wrong with Agnes?”

  “Pa beat her.” Lenora had a humorous streak and giggled at the shocked look on Satterfield’s face. “Well, he didn’t actually—but he threatened to.”

  “Should have done it a long time ago. She’s almost pleasant tonight.”

  “How are Logan and Pete doing?” Lylah inquired about her brothers. “I haven’t heard from either of them for ages.”

  “Logan’s working himself to death on that hill he calls a farm over near Stone River,” Will Stuart frowned. “Just had a new baby. Named him Clinton. Don’t see how he feeds them four kids on that scratch farm!”

  “Pete’s doing better,” Lenora inserted. “Got a job working in the oil fields in Oklahoma.”

  “Have he and Leslie produced any Stuarts?” Lylah asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t see why people like Logan and Pete bring children into the world.” Mel Tolliver had put food away at an enormous rate. His face was red with the effort, and he grunted as he downed a massive forkful of sweet potato pie. “If they can’t feed them, why do they have them?”

  An awkward silence fell over the table, and it was Christie who said gently, “Why, I think poor people need children—maybe more than rich people, Mel.”

  Tolliver gave her an impatient look. “Can’t feed kids on love,” he said sharply. “I say people who don’t have the ability to take care of a family shouldn’t have one.”

  “Some at this table wouldn’t be here if I’d thought like that, Mel,” Will said gently. He smiled and winked at Lylah, adding, “I didn’t have a pot to plant a petunia in when your mother and me got married. But we made out.”

  “You did better than that, Will,” Don Satterfield said. “You’ve got one son who’s going to win a Pulitzer for his reporting, one who’s the greatest evangelist in America, and one daughter who’s the greatest actress in . . . in . . .”

  When Satterfield groped for a word, Lylah laughed, her eyes sparkling. “In this room?” she jibed. Then she turned to her father and nodded, “You should be proud, Pa. You’ve got a fine family.”

  The meal ended, and after a long evening Lylah shooed Christie out of the kitchen. “Mel didn’t come here to see you wash dishes,” she chided. “Go for a walk with the man. Go on now!”

  Christie went to the parlor where Mel was giving his view of prohibition to her father. He was smoking a large cigar and punctuated his sentences by poking it toward Will. “Going to be trouble, Will,” he insisted. “The Volstead Act, making it illegal to sell alcoholic beverages, went in on January 16, and there’s trouble already. Why, I read that it’ll take 250,000 police in New York alone to enforce it.”

  Will shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Don’t know about New York, but folks in these hills been makin’ whiskey for a hundred years. Guess a law passed in Washington won’t change that.”

  Christie listened to the men talk, then said, “Mel, would you like to see the new calf?”

  Tolliver rose and went out of the house with her. They walked along the path to the barn, and after he had dutifully admired the calf, they strolled back toward the house. He stopped beside the oak tree and glanced toward the house. “Makes things awkward, your sister being here.”

  “Awkward? How is that?”

  “Why, her bringing that baby here. Folks don’t take to that sort of thing, Christie. I’d think she’d be ashamed to bring her illegitimate child back home.”

  Christie wanted to argue, but she had learned that Tolliver was not a man to change his views. “Pa wanted to see his grandson,” she offered mildly.

  “Well, them actors and actresses got no morals.” Tolliver shrugged. “Just like animals, everybody knows that. Anyways, she and the kid won’t hang around here.” He frowned, adding, “I’ve got a reputation to maintain in Fort Smith, Christie. A man has to be careful about things like this.”

  The moonlight laid a silver gleam on Christie’s face, and Tolliver suddenly reached out and pulled her close. His lips were loose and wet, and Christie endured his kiss, giving nothing of herself.

  “What’s wrong with you, Christie?” Tolliver demanded, displeased with her. “Don’t you feel anything for me?”

  “I . . . I just don’t have any experience, Mel,” Christie pleaded. “You’ll have to be patient with me.”

  Tolliver shifted his feet, then laughed. “Why, sure,” he nodded. “You just need a teacher, that’s all. After we’re married, you’ll warm up. Come on now, give me a real kiss. I’ve got to get back to Fort Smith. Got a big sale starting tomorrow.”

  At the same time that the pair were talking, Lylah had come down after putting Adam to bed to find her father staring into space. He was sitting in the living room alone, and when she sat down and put her hand on his, he started. “Oh, Lylah, guess I must be gettin’ old.”

  “You’re still the best looking fella in the county, Pa.” Lylah leaned back and asked abruptly, “Why is Christie going with this Mel Tolliver?”

  “Nothing wrong with Mel,” Will said defensively. “He’s an up-and-coming young man.”

  “And dull as dishwater!”

  “He may not be as excitin’ as some of them actor fellows you run with,” Will said stiffly, “but if he suits Christie, ain’t no business of yours to criticize him!”

  Lylah sat silently, disturbed by what was happening. She knew that her father had a terrible life, and it was likely that Agnes made life hard for Christie and Lenora as well. She felt a streak of guilt, not for the first time, of leaving them to cope with the hardships of farm life—and with Agnes. “I’m sorry, Pa,” she said contritely. “It’s just that I want Christie to have a good life. She doesn’t know much about men, and I’m just not sure Tolliver’s the man to make her happy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “For one thing—he’s a lecher.”

  “A what?”

  “Pa, he’s not to be trusted where women are concerned.”

  Will stared at his daughter, then shook his head. “He’s got a good reputation with women. If he hadn’t, we’d know about it. Can’t keep a thing like that secret in a town this small. He’s late marryin’, but he’s got his mother to take care of.”

  “Pa, you know the minute you take up a fiddle if it’s true or not, don’t you?”

  “Why—sure!”

  “Well, I’m not proud
of it, but I’m the same way about men.” A bitterness crept into Lylah’s tone, and she shook her head sadly. “I learned the hard way, Pa, and I wish I hadn’t. A woman alone—especially an actress—meets all kinds. It gets so you can just look at a man and know what he is, and I’m telling you that Mel Tolliver is a womanizer!”

  “But he’s never been one to chase women!”

  “It’s in him, Pa,” Lylah nodded emphatically. “You ever see one of those little dogs who like to bite ankles?”

  “Sure I have!”

  “Well, you can put a muzzle on one of those dogs. He won’t bite anyone—but you can bet he’s lusting after an ankle! Tolliver keeps it all up tight, but sooner or later he’s going to bust loose—and I just hate to see Christie tied to a man like that.”

  Will shook his head, and he seemed to age as he sat there before her. “I don’t worry about Lenora. Don’t reckon she’ll ever marry. I look for her to go for a missionary someday. It’s what she’s always wanted. She’s a tough one—like you in a lot of ways, Lylah. But Christie—she’s tender. She’s ashamed of not bein’ married.”

  “Why didn’t she marry, Pa? She’s pretty enough.”

  “I think she had a bad experience when she was about sixteen. She ain’t never spoke of it, but before that she was a laughin’ girl. Went to the dances, and the boys liked her. But that summer when she turned sixteen—somethin’ happened. I tried to talk to her, but it wasn’t no use. She lost somethin’—and it wasn’t until six months ago she started courtin’ again.”

  “You think some man misused her?”

  “Don’t like to think that—but it’s happened.” He heaved himself to his feet and turned to her as she rose. “A man don’t know much about women. There’s a little world in them that no man can quite get into.” He thought hard, then shook his head. “I wish she’d not chosen Tolliver, but she wants a home, and that takes a man.”

  Lylah wanted to protest that the wrong man was worse than no man at all, but she felt that her own record gave her no right to speak. She pulled his head down, kissed him on the cheek, then whispered, “I’ve got a mighty fine pa!”

  Will blinked in surprise, then said, “Wish your ma could hear you say that.” He turned and left the room heavily, leaving Lylah alone. She moved to the window and looked out at the moon that was wreathed with a thin veil of silvery clouds. They moved quickly, cloaking the silver disk until it was hidden. Then she turned and went to her room. And there was a heaviness in her that she knew no night’s sleep would lighten.

  She had one short conversation with Lenora the next day. The two of them were walking along the small creek where Lylah had caught sunfish when she was a girl. They talked about Christie, and when Lylah expressed her doubts about Tolliver, Lenora agreed. “Nothing to be done, except to pray for her.” Then she took Lylah by the arm and said, “What about you, Lylah? Are you ever going to let God have his way with you?”

  Lylah expected such an approach from Lenora. There was a directness in this sister of hers that she would have resented in anyone else, but she knew the sweetness of her heart.

  “I’ve got to take care of my son, Lenora. I’m forty, which means my time is almost gone for leading roles. I’ve got to have a quick break, make it big. That’s why I finally decided to go to Hollywood. In that place, crazy as it is, just one good picture can make me rich enough to take care of Adam—get him raised and through college.”

  Lenora said no more, so Lylah asked, “What about you, Lenora?”

  “I’ve given my life to God. He’s called me to serve him—as a missionary, I hope.” She abruptly embraced this willful sister of hers, kissed her on the cheek, then whispered, “I know God is going to catch up with you, Lylah, but he may have to cripple you first—so you don’t run so fast!”

  SOMETIMES THE WORLD FALLS APART

  Although Christie enjoyed visiting with her brother Logan and his family, she was grieved by the hardness of their lives. The forty-acre hill farm Logan scratched with mule-drawn plow had been worn out before he bought it, and the first months of 1920 had been bad. The year had started out wet, so that Logan was late breaking the land and planting. Water stood in the middles and washed gullies across the fields. Flies bred in the wetness, and seed ticks hatched on weed tips in clumps heavy enough to bend them over.

  Christie had learned to tie strings soaked in coal oil around her wrists and legs to ward them off, but every time she visited the fields, she came home clawing at the tiny insects. She had come to be of help with the new baby, Clinton, and had found herself working around the house a great deal of the time. Anne, Logan’s wife, had not recovered well from the birth, and Christie took it on herself to do as much of the hard work as she could.

  Just outside the house Logan had put an ash hopper big enough to hold the ashes from a year’s fire in the cookstove and the fireplaces. All the ashes went into the hopper, and a trough was set so that with every rain some water trickled down on the ashes and was caught in a wooden keg at the bottom. This was the lye water for making soap and for husking hominy.

  One hot morning Christie came to a pot of soap in the second day of boiling. It bubbled in an iron washtub with its three legs set on three flat rocks. Christie built up the fire, humming, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” under her breath. The trick was to keep the soap boiling, but not enough to run over. It had started out as a layer of hog grease on lye water, but now the lye had worked, she saw. There was only one liquid needing now to be boiled down to a thickness of soap.

  Logan appeared, his thin chambray shirt darkened with sweat. “You don’t have to work yourself to death, Christie,” he remarked. He was a tall man of thirty-five but looked ten years older. Wrestling the bare necessities of life out of the rocky hill farm had drained him. Taking off his straw hat, he wiped the sweat from his face and smiled at her. “I remember when you were just a little thing, when we were picking cotton. I used to have to tie you with a string to a stake to keep you from wandering off into the woods.”

  Christie laughed, her eyes crinkling in a way that was characteristic of her, something she alone of the children had gotten from her mother’s side of the family. “And once I got loose, and everyone had to quit picking and hunt for me.”

  “You were up to your ears in the creek, having a fine time.” Logan’s eyes grew thoughtful, and he shook his head. “Those seem like good times to me, Christie.” He looked around at the fields, at the lanky mules hitched to the plow, then added, “Don’t mean to complain, but it’s been a hard couple of years.”

  “Maybe you could get a better farm in the lowlands, Logan. This place is worn out.”

  “Takes money for that.”

  “Amos said he offered to help you.”

  “He’s got a family of his own.” Logan’s face turned stubborn, and Christie said no more. She was well aware of the independence of her brother. They were all like that, as were Lenora and Lylah. Logan, she knew, would starve before taking help from anyone, even his own brother. To change the subject, he said, “Let’s go catch a fish before it gets hot. This blamed old garden will wait.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Thirty minutes later the pair were sitting on the grassy bank of a creek that bubbled whitely over water-smoothed stones. Christie lifted her ten-foot-long cane pole and captured the small hook. Reaching into an old syrup bucket, she extracted a huge worm that wiggled frantically. “Night crawlers are the best bait,” she said, then stuck her tongue out as she threaded the worm carefully on the hook.

  “You’re gonna’ bite your tongue off one of these days,” Logan grinned. “Never knew a body’s tongue had to be out to bait a hook.”

  Christie completed the operation, studied the worm, then spit on it. “That’s the reason I catch more fish than you do,” she nodded. “If you’d listen to me more, you’d know more.”

  Logan watched lazily, leaning back against the bank at their backs. He was tired to the bone, as always, and the hot s
un made him sleepy. He studied Christie, admiring the long blond hair and the trim figure. She was wearing a pair of ancient overalls that had belonged to him, and he thought suddenly, She’d be a beaut, Christie would, if she had some pretty clothes. Maybe that feller that’s courtin’ her will dress her up when they get married.

  Christie swung her bait out, let it drop into the smooth water, then set her eyes on the red-and-white cork. “Sure would like a mess of goggle-eye perch,” she remarked. “Anne can cook fish better than anybody I know.”

  “Yep, reckon that’s right.”

  The sky was an azure blue, hard enough to scratch a match on, and the white clouds that drifted over their heads formed huge billows. Looking up, Logan observed them through half-shut eyes and said idly, “When you and Mel going to tie the knot, Christie?”

  “Oh, he hasn’t even asked me yet.” The question seemed to disturb Christie, for she turned her head away, studying five buzzards that were making their fatal circle over a field a mile away. “Buzzards sure do fly pretty for such ugly things,” she remarked.

  Logan gave her a careful look, knowing that she was avoiding the question. He had worried about this younger sister of his, for most girls in the mountains had started their families at her age. He wished he could help her, for though he was not an educated man, Logan was what many call “country smart.” He had an uncanny ability to judge people, and his impression of Mel Tolliver had been that Tolliver was a selfish man. He struggled to find some way to put what was in his mind before Christie, but he was not good with words. Finally he gave it up. “Going to be a hot day,” he said, letting the moment pass.

  Even as he spoke, Christie’s cork disappeared with a loud plop, and she lifted her pole sharply. The line zigzagged frantically, cutting through the dark water. “You got ’im, Chris!” Logan shouted, as she came to her feet. “Hold ’im tight, don’t give ’im no slack!”